Terrorism, Human Rights and Peace in Kashmir (Learning from the Punjab Experience)

This paper argues that human rights are the basic of the human governance and good governance is possible only in the peaceful and progressive environment. Terrorism is dangerous to both the human rights and peace. Unfortunately the issue of human rights is over politicised and sometimes it is used by the vested interests to derail the government measures to establish peace, law and order, which is basic requirement for the protection of human rights and governance. The vociferous campaign of some National and International Human Rights Group along with some political parties in opposition on the issue of violation of human rights by the security measures in Kashmir especially after the revocation of the Article 370 are analysed under the above context. While referring to the measures which were taken by the central government to established peace in Punjab just in the neighboring state of J&K then, paper holds that the strong measures against the terrorism are necessary measures to secure the human rights of the common citizens in Kashmir. This paper also exposes the dubious character of the some national and international human rights groups along with the political parties in opposition that are more worried about the right to freedom of expression instead of the right to life in a volatile situation like in Kashmir.